Shandi Mitchell - Under This Unbroken Sky

A police car slows to get around a horse and buggy. “Gerry, Gerry,” hollers Stefan, “this is my daughter.” The officer frowns and keeps on driving.

He confides to Lesya: “I know him, he relies on me for information. He has to keep a low profile, all hush-hush. I beat the son of a bitch at cards last night.”

The bell on the door tinkles open and Maria and Dania step out.

“Maria!” Stefan stumbles up the bottom step, Lesya protectively leans over the box. Stefan removes his hat. “You look beautiful, Maria. You always were a beautiful woman.”

“How are you, Stefan?” Maria responds neutrally.

“I’m good, I’m real good.”

The pause widens.

“I hear Teodor’s back.”

“Yes,” she says.

He eyes the packages. “Things are going well for you. It’s good we could help you out in a time of need.”

“Anna’s doing fine,” Maria states pointedly.

Stefan is about to reply, thinks better of it, and laughs. “I’m workin’ on things here, got a deal going.” He winks at Lesya. “When I got it all sewed up, I’ll be home to look after things. Tell Teodor to make sure he takes good care of my place.”

“We have to go.” Maria takes a step down. These words release Lesya and she picks up the box, ready to run.

“Sure, sure, me too, I gotta get back to work… at the hotel.”

“Good-bye, Stefan.” Maria descends the stairs, the girls huddle close to her skirt.

“Maria?” He grabs her arm but promptly lets go when her eyes pierce him. “You got anything you can spare?” He tries to smile charmingly. “I’m between paydays.”

“Go on ahead.” The girls hesitantly obey. Maria reaches in the pouch around her neck and fishes out twenty-five cents, careful not to let him see the other dollar. “That’s all I have left.” His trembling hand clutches it thirstily.

“I’ll pay you back.” He laughs and says half-jokingly, “Or we can call it rent payment for the land.”

Maria’s eyes turn cold. “Take care of yourself, Stefan.”

“Lesya!” Stefan hollers. “Aren’t you going to say good-bye?”

“Good-bye,” she says weakly. She quickens her step and trips over her crippled foot.

THE BOYS CONSTRUCT A HENHOUSE FENCED WITH WILLOW, designed more to keep the chicks contained than to keep danger out. Ivan and Petro, tired and hungry, race to complete the job. In the middle of the night, the families wake to hysterical cackling. Lesya arrives first, ignoring Teodor’s shouts to stay back as he loads his gun. She rips open the makeshift fence gate and the yellow tomcat glares back at her. Its shoulders hunched, its claws extended, its eyes reflecting green and empty in the moon’s light, its mouth stuffed with feathers, it flees into the night.

The young cock and eight chicks scurry frantically in circles, ricocheting off the fence, screeching, The sky is falling! The sky is falling! And this time they are right.

“Here chick, chick, chick,” she calls, trying to sound calm, her voice wavering. Her twisted foot throbs from the impact of running across the yard. “Here chick, chick, chick,” ignoring the ones colliding into her ankles, looking for only one. She walks toward the chicken coop, a hastily slapped together shelter of pallets and crates. Her bare feet follow the trail of feathers. Flecks of white, softly glowing, tremble in the breeze. She falls to her knees, not caring about the hot chicken shit smearing her hands, and crawls into its darkness.

Her fingers grope the straw and search the corners, finding nothing but splinters and mouse droppings. She holds her breath and listens with her entire heart, until the blood pumping in her ears deafens her. She falls back in the dirt, a small feather stuck to her big toe, and looks out to her family.

Maria gathers the other chicks safely in her nightgown. Anna stands at the gate, her arms impassively crossed. Teodor brandishes the .22 like a soldier, pacing the perimeter, looking for the enemy. Behind them the sleepy faces of her cousins peer over the thatched fence, an odd display of floating heads barely visible in the night. Petro keeps his head down, knowing he is the one who left a hole in the fence. He had asked Lesya if she had seen Tato in town. She said, No, he’s gone and he’s never coming back . Like she didn’t care.

Inside the roost, apart from everyone else, Lesya wishes she had never been born. She imagines herself inside an egg, getting smaller and smaller, until she is nothing more than a fleck, floating in a thick sea of yolk, upside down, surrounded by warmth. Outside the voices recede, muffled by the walls of her shell. She could disappear if it wasn’t for the peck-peck-peck intruding on her silence.

She opens her eyes and sees a loose floorboard flopping up and down and a yellow head pushing through the space between. The chick squirms its way out, sprawls onto the floor, shakes its ruffled wings, and then hops onto her foot. That very instant, Lesya names the chick Happiness, a word she had never understood before, and in the next breath she vows never to tell anyone. She carries the chick to Maria and passes it to her waiting hands.

Ivan and Petro, with Teodor supervising, spend the rest of the night reinforcing the fence. It isn’t until the morning sun peeks out that he releases them back to bed. A few hours later, Ivan wakes with a start and runs to check the fence, a pattern he will repeat every night for a week. Over the next month, the boys add briars and another layer of willow. Whenever Ivan sees the yellow cat, he throws a rock at it.

THE HENS ARE EACH LAYING AN EGG A DAY NOW. THE families gorge themselves on fried eggs and boiled eggs, ladled with hand-churned butter. Maria makes thick, fluffy pancakes. She bakes poppy-seed cakes that require eight whipped egg whites and scrambles the yolks for breakfast and dinner. She pickles dozens more. Those that go bad or break are given to the cats, the eggshells are scattered in the garden, and the boys smuggle a few for their stink-bomb arsenal. The family takes on the roundness of a soft-boiled egg.

The girls’ hips widen, their breasts grow heavier, the boys’ muscles swell and their bellies soften. The girls wash their hair in egg yolks to make it shine. Every Sunday, they sell two dozen to the hotel for twenty-five cents. Maria keeps the money in a tin can under her bed, a savings account for the purchase of a window for their new house.

It is Lesya and Katya’s job to tend the chickens. Lesya is in charge of collecting the eggs and overseeing the feeding and watering. Katya is poop patrol and the clean-straw brigade. Every morning, Lesya’s chicken greets her by hopping on her foot, then following her as she does her chores, keeping up a constant chatter, as if relaying the previous night’s events. Lesya sings to the bird and it cocks its head back and forth as if trying to catch the notes, tapping its crooked foot like it is dancing, all the while clucking off-key. Ivan says she should sell it to a traveling circus or better yet let him take it to town and hold a show, Ivan’s Singing Dancing Chicken . He even volunteers Dania to make the hen a dress. They’d be rich. But no matter how much Ivan coaxes the bird to perform, the only one who can make it dance is Lesya, and she has no intention of ever taking it back to town.

Each night, Lesya locks Happiness safely in its roost, slipping an extra handful of fresh straw in the nest, before kissing the top of its head good-night. Some mornings, she sits in the corner, lulled by the soft clucking and warmth, and watches as hen after hen pushes out an egg. Only her chicken allows her to slide her hand under it to feel the contractions and final push before shoving out a perfect, warm egg, still wet and sticky, into the palm of her hand.